The present invention relates to fluoroscopic imaging, and more particularly, to the detection and modeling of a catheter within fluoroscopic image sequences.
The detection of catheters is important in a variety of medical applications. Catheters are tubes that may be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Some types of catheter may be used to generate an electrical map of a heart to assist medical professionals in identifying locations of abnormal electrical activity within the heart. These types of catheters may be inserted into arteries and guided to the heart. Medical procedures using catheters are typically monitored using fluoroscopic imaging, in which a sequence of fluoroscopic images is acquired in real-time during the procedure. The detection of catheters in such fluoroscopic images is difficult due to varying imaging quality of the fluoroscopic images.